I'm trying to get my email all squared away and I am having serious issues with the smtp server. My first question is what is the purpose of sasl? I know that it is meant for a secure connection, but email isn't a secure communication (unless you encrypt the actual text message thoroughly yourself).

The problem I'm having is that postfix that ships with NetBSD doesn't include sasl support for the client (the server has dovecot). I don't need this to act as a full blown mail server. It should merely relay the message to the remote server that I have been assigned (that is it should act only as a client).

I modified all the setting in main.cf according to the tutorials (i.e., relay host, smtp_enable_sasl, setup sasl_password file), and it still won't work. I keep getting a fatal SASL library initialization error!

I built postfix from pkgsrc including cyrus sasl, but it doesn't want to use that postfix. It keeps trying to use the original postfix which doesn't include the sasl. I even copied the rc script for the new postfix to /etc/rc.d/ and still it gives me issues. It complains on startup of postfix already being running and postfix not being used as in mailer.conf (but the sendmail command doesn't appear to have been included in /usr/pkg/libexec/postfix).

Now, postfix is configured and working for local mail delivery. And fetchmail is working with it and downloading from my remote pop server(s). It's just when postfix goes to send remote emails that it fails.

I am thinking of using the DynDNS MailHop Outbound service (for one thing, the mail server my hosting company uses is run by a company I can't tolerate) - does it allow non-sasl connections (it appears to be the case)?

Another thing: Currently postfix runs as a daemon, but I don't need it to run all the time. I only need it at certain times to send along the mail queue. Is it possible to not start it at boot time but only call it at certain times (say upon exiting mutt, or when I logoff) have it send mail and then exit the postfix processes?

Note: sorry if this seems a little rant-like, this has become quite irritating!

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And the WORD was made flesh, and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

I'm an OpenBSD user, who set up SASL in order to use DynDNS mailhop forwarding. I use it with the built-in sendmail, though.

SASL is not used for the e-mail itself, as it might be forwarded in-the-clear if the destination MX does not support it. It does, however, restrict the use of your mailhop service, that you pay for, to you.

In order to build sendmail with SASL support on that OS, I needed two things:

1) The cyrus-sasl package had to be installed
2) Sendmail needed to be built with WANT_SMTPAUTH=yes (which went into /etc/mk.conf)

I'm an OpenBSD user, who set up SASL in order to use DynDNS mailhop forwarding. I use it with the built-in sendmail, though.

SASL is not used for the e-mail itself, as it might be forwarded in-the-clear if the destination MX does not support it. It does, however, restrict the use of your mailhop service, that you pay for, to you.

In order to build sendmail with SASL support on that OS, I needed two things:

1) The cyrus-sasl package had to be installed
2) Sendmail needed to be built with WANT_SMTPAUTH=yes (which went into /etc/mk.conf)

I don't know if NetBSD might also require cyrus-sasl.

In NetBSD you must build Postfix (as they no longer use sendmail as default) with sasl. This is accomplished by adding PKG_OPTIONS.postfix+=sasl to /etc/mk.conf

I am timidly saying that I have got the sasl working. The problem was that the system was not using the new postfix but the old one. This was remedied by coping /usr/pkg/share/examples/postfix/mailer.conf to /etc/ and /usr/pkg/share/examples/rc.d/postfix to /etc/rc.d/

I then had to configure /usr/pkg/etc/postfix/main.cf - not /etc/postfix/main.cf. I'm sure that I could alter the scripts (this seems to come from the postconf command) to get it back to /etc/postfix or (even easier) symlink -- but it works as it is now!

__________________
And the WORD was made flesh, and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

Another thing: Currently postfix runs as a daemon, but I don't need it to run all the time. I only need it at certain times to send along the mail queue. Is it possible to not start it at boot time but only call it at certain times (say upon exiting mutt, or when I logoff) have it send mail and then exit the postfix processes?

This seems to be needed. With postfix running as a daemon, it just doesn't work. I guess it is similar to the print daemon in this regard.

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And the WORD was made flesh, and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)